Dairy on the small scale: How Oxheart Farm makes it work

Written by Tara Greiman, Director of Conservation & Stewardship and Mirra Schultz, Executive Assistant

“By sidestepping commodity agriculture, we’ve sort of entered into a realm that’s slightly more functional than everything else with commoditization,” Emmet Fisher told us early in our discussion as we walked between sheds at his farm in Pierce County.

WFU members and leaders since 2017, Emmet Fisher and Cella Langer are the lead farmers at Oxheart Farm, which is doing more than sidestepping commodities, it’s doing a do-si-do through the food system in Pierce County by raising a diverse mix of vegetables, pastured pork, beef, milk, yogurt, and soft serve ice cream for direct sale to CSA subscribers and shoppers who stop by their on-farm creamery.

Emmet Fisher and Cella Langer run Oxheart Farm in Pierce County.

By their estimate, Oxheart Farm is one of the smallest certified dairies and creameries in the state, currently milking five cows. Working at such a small scale with legal sales faces real hurdles in Wisconsin. Emmet noted that he knows other dairies who would love to do what he does, increase their margins and reduce their herd sizes to support their families without breaking their backs (and banks) to keep up with the demands of the corporatized agricultural system. However, sidestepping the system does take more effort and coordination. It takes ingenious work-arounds for existing statutes. For example, a bottle can’t be capped by hand according to the state rules. It must be mechanized, but not necessarily automated. So, Emmet and Cella have a small hand-levered device that mechanically puts the caps on each of their bottles. Roughly 5,000 bottles go out a year from Oxheart Farm, to be used by their customers and returned.

Mechanical assistance aside, the regulation for a small dairy is just the same as it for a large one.

“Our inspections are just as frequent as someone producing many, many times more milk,” Emmet noted after he and his son took off their creamery-only boots and came back outside.

Oxheart Farm produces an array of food products, including vegetables, pastured pork, beef, milk, yogurt, and soft serve ice cream.

A DATCP inspector visits the farm ten times a year. While this might make you feel safer, knowing the strict inspection schedule creameries are under in Wisconsin, it is interesting to think about the regulatory burden on the farm, as well as the taxpayer.

“We can’t put many people at risk compared to a Kemps,” Emmet said, as we headed to the pasture.

Getting bulk tank certified and sampling certified is its own bureaucratic process. Cella takes a test several times a year to “prove she knows how to take milk sample blinds.” This makes sense for companies that have staff turnover and are receiving milk from 30 different farms. It feels a little tedious when you know that you didn’t give any antibiotics to the five cows with milk in the tank.

Emmet and Cella have been selling milk since 2021, and despite the bureaucratic challenges, they’re making it work. They’ve worked with agency officials and note there are some variances in the code to help them meet the standards of health and safety in alternative ways to the large-scale dairy model. They respect the need for safety and the precautions built in, but they do think there could be improvements to the system to make it easier for small operators to begin to work in this system. A couple of potential solutions Emmet noted were a five-year written variance (since their product reaches far fewer people in five years than larger creameries meet in a month), or an on-farm processing track for one license instead of the four licenses their farm currently maintains.

Cella and Emmet routinely host field days and share their experiences with other farmers who are interested in a smaller dairy and direct-sales model. They know better than almost anyone that the bureaucratic and logistical lift of working outside of the existing dairy system is challenging.

However, they’ve found that the model works well for them. To balance the needs of their farm and family, Cella and Emmet just milk only once a day and allow their calves access to milk for a short period each day. This helps prevent burnout on their parts and helps them have the flexibility needed to meet the demands of family, crops, and the other responsibilities of their business.

For more information on Oxheart, you can find them online at oxheartfarm.com.